This year’s top feminist pop culture moments show artists, storytellers and creators faced regressive politics with imagination, joy and anger.
Another year of feminist struggles, another year of feminist triumphs. 2025 is no different—despite opening on a new presidential administration determined to reverse the progress made on women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, diversity, equity and inclusion, and a multiracial society built on a nation of immigrants.
Our pop culture nonetheless pushed back against this political backlash and provided more than a handful of glimpses into feminist resistance throughout the culture. Even when the moments weren’t specific to feminism (think Sinners, a male-driven story that nonetheless had a stellar cast of women, or even Wicked: For Good, whose female friendship contrasts with the problematic ending), they contributed to the cultural pushback.
Here is our annual list of the top 10 feminist moments of 2025.
10. Ms. in the Culture
This year, Ms. entered the cultural conversation in two milestone ways.
First was HBO’s documentary, Dear Ms. A Revolution in Print, which provided a historical overview of the magazine’s impact on feminist movement and culture throughout the decades.
Months later, Bess Wohl’s memory play, Liberation, about 1970s women’s consciousness-raising inspired by Ms., debuted on Broadway to critical acclaim.
In film or in theater, Ms. continues to prove its relevance and staying power to shape and influence the wider culture on feminist dialogue.
9. Women Holding Up the AI Mirror
…. consider how women’s roles may be used to advance AI technology in ways that enhance—rather than replace—creativity and our all-around humanity.
This year, two women creatives—Dutch technologist and actor Eline Van der Velden, and Mississippi native and poet Telisha “Nikki” Jones—demonstrated the great potential of AI with their respective creations Tilly Norwood (in acting) and Xania Monet (in singing).
They have already faced backlash from those in the movie and music industries who recognize how AI “artists” could take over their jobs and likeness.
Nonetheless, given the way that these women constructed their AI avatars to project their own ideals, we may recognize the technology as a useful cultural mirror and consider how women’s roles may be used to advance AI technology in ways that enhance—rather than replace—creativity and our all-around humanity.
8. Expanding Beyond Humanity
Speaking of humanity … sometimes our comprehension of what makes us human expands beyond our species. This year, two documentaries shined a spotlight on the incredible diversity of and sacred bonds we share with those in the animal kingdom.
There was the world premiere of Drew Denny’s Second Nature: Gender and Sexuality in the Animal World, based on Dr. Joan Roughgarden’s book Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, and narrated by trans actor and activist Elliot Page. A nature film exploring the presence of same-sex couplings in nature, gender transitioning fish and sea horses, and other aspects of gender and sex diversity, Second Nature pushes back on conservative views of what constitutes biological sex.
Adding a different voice is Oscar nominee and Native actor Lily Gladstone narrating the PBS documentary, Bring Them Home, about the efforts of Blackfoot people to restore wild buffalo on tribal land after a 100-year absence.
Both Page and Gladstone serve as executive producers for their respective films and remind us of the importance of diversity not just among humans but across all life.
7. Ode to Black Girl Joy (and A’ja Wilson)
WNBA athletes have lately been getting their shine, thanks to popular players like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, the latter making her debut this year as a Victoria’s Secret model in the company’s celebrated lingerie fashion show.
But it was A’ja Wilson, who really stepped out in 2025, not just as MVP player of the year and Time‘s athlete of the year, but also with her first Nike shoe endorsement and commercial, directed by none other than Malia Obama, daughter of the first African American president.
The Nike commercial stands out as a tribute to Black girl joy and play and sportsmanship. Featuring a young Black girl teaching A’ja Wilson a handclap game on a porch, the visuals recall the comfort of home (specifically Black Southern home, in homage to Wilson’s own upbringing) and the nostalgia of girlhood—both of Wilson and Obama, the latter who arrived in the White House when she was young. Black girlhood is both a memory and a site of innocence, creativity, prowess, and play. Girl power is a brand Nike has promoted over the years through its many women athletes, but in this case, Black girls can be celebrated for the promise they represent and the triumph that they already are.
6. Anxiety, Mayhem and Rage: What the Music Said
From Doechii’s unnerving music video for her catchy “Anxiety,” which set off a series of TikTok dances, to Lady Gaga’s gothic and weird vibes reflected in her Mayhem era, pop women artists captured the general mood and angst of the year. With the increasing technological surveillance of a police state with ICE agents, crackdowns on reproductive and immigration rights, and overall hostility from higher up over diversity, equity, and inclusion, 2025’s pop music gave us a space to vent.
Lady Gaga’s “Dead Dance” is very much the resistance dance we need and had already inspired an episode from the second season of Netflix’s dark comedy series Wednesday; her video animates dolls and other objects coming to life through the power of music. (“Dance or die!”)
Strikingly, Doechii embodies the anxiety-induced loss of privacy that our present culture represents.
Nonetheless, other artists—from Olivia Dean challenging Ticketmaster’s overpricing of her concert tickets, to Sabrina Carpenter condemning the use of her music by the current administration to promote ICE raids, to even rappers Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B bringing lawsuits against online defamers—are pushing beyond anxiety and mayhem to express their “rage against the machine.”
The times may be uncertain, but the music still has something to say.
5. Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter World Tour
Never ask permission for something that already belongs to you.
After the spectacular debut last year of her eighth solo album, Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé continued to shape the national conversation on country music and on who gets to define American culture. After Cowboy Carter resulted in the pop star becoming the first Black woman to win Grammy’s Best Country Album and the first Black woman this century (and the fourth overall) to win Grammy’s top prize of Album of the Year, Beyoncé set off on another record-setting world tour of the same album title this year.
Demonstrating once again that she is a master audio-visual storyteller—interweaving stage magic with musical remixes, precise choreography and cinematic visual narratives—the pop star curated a rich and Black-infused reframing of Americana. From the subversive vocalization of Jimi Hendrix’s iconic guitar riff on the Star-Spangled Banner, to clever use of Nina Simone’s “See-Line Woman” alongside imagery of Black Southern culture, Beyoncé made sure we got the message loud and clear: She doesn’t have to “ask permission for something that already belongs to” us.
Country music (and other American genres by extension) is as Black in its roots as it is in the red-white-and-blue patriotic colors it proudly displays. Wrapping the American flag around various anthems of Black power, feminism and queer liberation, Beyoncé makes “reclamation” a subversive art form.
4. Women Filmmakers Reframing History
To absorb the famous ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy within the context of grieving parents is to literally hear and feel the grief for the first time. This is the power of feminist filmmaking.
Women filmmakers continue to make strides in 2025, premiering some powerful stories that place women at the center or showcase new perspectives on familiar and not-so-familiar tales and people.
The documentary Prime Minister, directed by Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz, revisits recent history as it reflects on the time New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Arden was in power from 2017 to 2023. Walshe and Utz’s film deftly explores the ways that a progressive woman’s leadership successfully tackled difficult struggles—from terrorism and mass shootings to the global pandemic—and how politics collide with the personal, including issues of motherhood. At a time when the U.S. failed to elect a woman president while other countries surpass us, Prime Minister sheds light on what feminist leadership can accomplish.
Exploring a far distant past but also examining women’s leadership is the unconventional, genre-defying musical and period drama The Testament of Ann Lee, directed by Mona Fastvold, about the 18th-century founder of the Shakers (Amanda Seyfried in the titular starring role) struggling to build a utopia while dealing with those who see her as equal parts messiah and witch.
A much earlier story follows the wife of Shakespeare in Chloe Xhao’s sobering and heartbreaking Hamnet, based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell.
Much in the vein of Virginia Woolf’s imagining of “Shakespeare’s sister,” Hamnet centers on Agnes (played by Jessie Buckley in a sure-to-be awarded role) whose rustic and domestic world contrasts with the urban setting of Shakespeare’s theater world. Yet, the exploration of grief over the loss of their son through the transcendence of art—subsequently inspiring the tragedy Hamlet—set this film apart in how period films are often approached.
Xhao’s decision to focus on the maternal world of Agnes, as well as her transformation from outraged peasant interpreting a theatrical performance literally before she emotionally responds, to the actor figuratively representing her dead son (Hamlet in the leading role), gave the story the gravitas needed to appreciate lines we may have only heard previously as exalted canonical literature. To absorb the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy within the context of grieving parents is to literally hear and feel the grief for the first time. This is the power of feminist filmmaking.
3. The Diverse Women of The Gilded Age
It took three seasons for HBO’s The Gilded Age to find an appreciative audience and the kind of ratings to secure a fourth season. The first season gave the impression of “great gowns, beautiful gowns.”
The gowns are still stunning this latest season, but over time Downtown Abbey creator Julian Fellowes—whose soft spot for the elite on both sides of the Atlantic remains in his latest series—has deepened the drama to address the class, race and gender issues that abound in a tumultuous time like Gilded-Age-era New York City.
Season 3 especially stands out with some fierce women (and legendary actors, including Carrie Coon, Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald) protecting their daughters (or forcing them into strategic marriages with British aristocracy), conflicting with their sons or advocating for temperance and suffrage.
This is not your radical feminist drama; but we do have strong-minded Black women like Peggy Scott (played by Denée Benton) with ambitions “to be a good wife and mother who has the vote.” Most likely modeled after the courageous journalist Ida B. Wells, Peggy pursues both politics and romance in ways that demonstrate that the involvement of Black women executive producers like Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Salli Richardson-Whitfield have done much to expand the world of The Gilded Age.
While the worlds remain racially segregated (as is historically accurate), there are still those subversive moments, such as the inclusion of real historical actors—like suffragist and abolitionist writer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (played by Lisa Gay Hamilton) giving a speech in the homes of old wealthy New York families. Whether that could have happened during the era, for our own contemporary times, the history lessons and revisionist race and gender politics are far more appreciated than the colorblind approach of shows like Bridgerton.
2. Teaching Gender Lessons Through Youth Culture
Netflix has been making money moves—to quote Cardi B (who’s been making her own “money moves” with her successful sophomore album Am I the Drama? that dropped this year!)—most recently with its acquisition of Warner Brothers and HBO. However, its cultural dominance is really where the streaming company has moved the needle on youth culture with its subversive depictions of gender issues.
First there was the searing British-based limited series, Adolescence, which earned several Emmy awards (including for Owen Cooper, the youngest actor to win Best Supporting Actor, who played young Jamie) for its exploration of violent masculinity and the dark misogynistic online world that sneers young boys into killing young girls.
On the flip side is the moving and honest exploration of first-time love and sexual awakenings in the Mara Brock Ali-directed series Forever, adapted from Judy Blume’s controversial 1975 novel, to reflect on Black middle-class life and coming-of-age. The seamless integration of HBCU and Oak Bluffs culture with a story first introduced from a white suburban sensibility demonstrates the transcendental lessons of love and youth.
Netflix’s popular fantasy series Stranger Things zeroes in on 1980s nostalgia and its storytelling of young people’s feelings of alienation and outsider status as they find likeminded friends, clubs, gangs and cliques. Its latest installment also subtly explores same-sex awakenings and solidarity, while hinting that self-acceptance may be the key to fighting monsters and other inner demons.
From toxic masculinity to first love to self-discovery, gender provides multifaceted and timeless lessons for our youth.
1. The Fierce Feminism of K-Pop Demon Hunters
Speaking of Netflix’s influence on youth culture, its biggest animation film K-Pop Demon Hunters permeated the culture globally. It’s the most popular film of all time for the streaming company, and its soundtrack has four songs topping the Billboard charts. Recently, the voice actors behind the animated K-pop girl group HUNTR/X—Ejae (as Rumi), Audrey Nuna (as Mira) and Rei Ami (as Zoey)—performed the hit song “Golden” live for the first time at the 99th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Thankfully, K-Pop Demon Hunters also has one of the fiercest feminist themes we’ve seen in years. Co-director Maggie Kang, who wrote the story, delivered a tour de force of K-pop music, mythology, Korean history and present-day sensibilities, and a steady diet of feminist empowerment. A story exploring pop girls fighting demons with the power of both swords and their singing voices is one thing, but this animation had me at hello when its first shot of these pop stars backstage included the girls stuffing their faces with their favorite foods and burping afterward.
It is the great irony of getting such an honest depiction of young women in friendship in a fantasy animation story: We get catchy, ear-wormy songs. (“Soda Pop” as their rival boy band’s hit song is so on-the-nose about that genre of music.) But more than that, we get lessons in character flaws, battle-of-the-sexes rivalry and heartfelt affection, and solidarity against the forces of evil. K-Pop Demon Hunters deftly integrates the popular confections of pop music, hip-hop, even a sprinkling of Bollywood samples and Japanese anime—but mostly, it dismisses easy binaries of ‘good versus evil,’ ‘boy band versus girl band’ or even ‘global culture versus local culture.’
Given how Pixar learned the wrong lessons when it decided to move away from “identity-driven” stories like Turning Red (about an Asian girl coming of age in Canada) and Soul (about a Black man clinging to his soul to avoid death)—rather than recognize how the pandemic impacted their box office—the super-hit status of K-Pop Demon Hunters is a powerful rebuke to all those companies that would reject non-white woman-centered storytelling.
Here’s to all of us who “broke into a million pieces” and can now “find beauty in the broken glass.” (What a profound lyric and metaphoric nod to the Japanese art of kintsugi.)
The girls are all right!
